8. Open Source Hardware - From Fibers to Fabric¶
During this week we worked as a group on making a machine that can extrude natural material made from (food) waste.
End Results¶
Above: the three versions of the Extruder and the material tests, ranging from the earliest tests with eggshells and two versions of shell sand at the top till the extruded eggshell alginate at the bottom.
Brainstorm¶
Above: all ideas on post-its (also see list below) and the extruder + conveyor belt. Photos and drawings by Rebecca Louise
Above: hacking a sewing machine and a bicycle. I still think one year the Amsterdam hub should work out the bicycle idea ;). Photos and drawing by Rebecca Louise
Above: a record player, an extrusian system attached to the arm. The very first start of our plans. Photos and drawing by Rebecca Louise
Even though we were asked to come with some ideas, it took a while before we got going during our brainstorm on Wednesday morning. Perhaps the overwhelming amount of knitting machines and related fashion related machines (loom, spinning etc.) killed our thoughts initially, yet after a while it became clear our brains did work and we had a list of potential ideas on – mind you – post-its:
- Hack 3D printer & extrude paste (yes;)
- Make extruder machine
- Kombucha dryer
- Conductive yarn
- Bicycle generating movement
- Loom making with feature
- Water colours complete set in box
- 3D printing on a conveyor belt
- Filament machine powered by bicycle
- Tool + conductive and bio-material
- Tool + 3D scanner
- Social (Nieuwmarkt) bicycle sewing machine
At first, we were enthusiastic about the conveyor belt idea. This would enable us to make much larger 3D printed areas, suitable for actually producing something the size of fabrics, rather than a 15x15 cm sample. Also see the first image in the series of three above.
We thought, discussed, and designed a solution combining the conveyer belt and an extruding system for which a stand with changeable tops would ‘drop’ the material on the conveyor belt.
We immediately realised that the material would need to be quite sturdy, not to spread once on the belt. Furthermore, we realised we needed an underground and perhaps the belt would become obsolete if using something like an Ikea paper-dispenser for kids…
Next, the extrusion caught our attention. What would we extrude, and, more importantly, how would we do so? We could do so by hand, but perhaps using a syringe and an automatically (programmed) system would work best. We settled for this and started research into syringes and systems. After documenting the possibilities out there. We decided to go for the simplest option there, which we found on Github. This project was very well documented by Keesj.
Keesj's simple extruder is the one in the image of the bottom left. Here's it is filled with chocolate paste, so we thought we could create a bio-material that is paste-like.
Ideally, however, we'd do something like this: using a simple syringe mechanism mounted on an Ultimaker original (which we have unused upstairs). But we were repeatedly told to keep things simple, so let's concentrate on creating an extruder and coming up with a suitable recipe for it.
Prototyping the Extruder¶
We had ordered two syringes through Blokker.nl on Wednesday, but in the morning, it turned out these hadn’t even left the storage room. So, we decided to change plans and adapt the file for the Prusa printer to fit a syringe we found at Waag. Sara took care of this on the basis of the photos we sent her.
Sara mentioned that we may need to add some support and we fiddled around with it a little. The support was on 45 overhang angle, but we could only see it when turning on the ‘preview’, rather than the ‘prepare’ button. We played around a little and discovered that 0 ‘overhang angle’ provides maximum support and 90 no support at all. Henk helped out and said no support was needed.
Looking at the images, we realised there may only be very little room for the paste in the syringe, but this didn’t turn out to be a problem later on. All we would need is a 8 cm bolt to make sure we get all the paste out.
Henk helped and advised to change the temperature of the nozzle to 245 degrees Celsius and that of the board to 85 degrees Celsius. He also advised to keep the doors closed as much as possible, seeing the heat can easily be disrupted when wind or a breath blows in.
We put the file on the scandisk. Wrote down its name: PI3MK3M_UM2_syringe_extruder_30 and made our way to the Prusa printer to start the assembly of our ‘baby’, which would take about 3,5 hours. Not too bad.
Documentation PRUSA instructions
1. Turn on at the back of the machine
2. Clean the board on top of the (magnetic) bed. This is important because you’re printing directly on the board and not on fabric
3. Push the filament in from the top
4. Enter main menu: ‘Load filament’ and press the knob
5. Under temperature: select ‘material’ and PET (it will use the temperature selected during the slice)
6. Press the knob to start extruding
7. The machine will ask you whether the colour filament that is extruded is the right one. We don’t know because perhaps the same colour yet a different filament was used previously. So we press ‘no’ several times until we see a long clear orange thread coming out.
8. After pressing ‘yes’ (see previous action) we go to ‘settings’. There’s no real need to change these.
9. Put the SD card in the slot and select the appropriate file (ours was titled PI3MK3M_UM2_syringe_extruder_30)
10. The printer will start heating and running
11. Henk reminds us to close the doors because the heat of the nozzle is 245 degrees and the board is 85, just some wind would make the temperature drop, which is not what we want
12. Wait a few hours and let the model cool down before taking it out, meanwhile:
13. Take out filament by pulling hard while you make sure the head is still hot
14. Turn off Machine (at the back)
Photos below generally follow the list above
1. Turn on at the back of the machine
Smoke detector (left) and the way to remove the plate (check fingerprints) for cleaning (2)
3. Push the filament in from the top
4. Enter main menu: ‘Load filament’ and press the knob
5. Under temperature: select ‘material’ and PET (it will use the temperature selected during the slice)
6. Press the knob to start extruding
7. The machine will ask you whether the colour filament that is extruded is the right one. We don’t know because perhaps the same colour yet a different filament was used previously. So we press ‘no’ several times until we see a long clear orange thread coming out.
8. After pressing ‘yes’ (see previous action) we go to ‘settings’. There’s no real need to change these.
9. Put the SD card in the slot and select the appropriate file (ours was titled PI3MK3M_UM2_syringe_extruder_30)
10. The printer will start heating and running
11. Henk reminds us to close the doors because the heat of the nozzle is 245 degrees and the board is 85, just some wind would make the temperature drop, which is not what we want
12. Wait a few hours and let the model cool down before taking it out, meanwhile:
13. Take out filament by pulling hard while you make sure the head is still hot
14. Turn off Machine (at the back)
Our ‘baby’ was 15 minutes early and the search for an eight cm M8 bolt and matching nut began, so that we could assemble it. In all our excitement, we forgot to turn off the Prusa, but all was well and Henk helped to pull out the filament (after making sure the nozzle was hot enough).
It would have been wiser to have come to the Waag this morning with the needed large and smaller bolts and nuts, but this will take into account next time around. The 5V motors Patty ordered arrived as planned (just ban Blokker) and were waiting for us in the Waag mailbox outside.
Apparently, something had gone wrong with the printing of the centre of the main sprocket. Once the bolt was though, I became clear that the wheel wouldn’t set anything in motion. The hole proved too large to push the bolt forward. After contemplating printing a new sprocket, Cecilia helped out. She suggested making the hole even larger by melting it with a solder gun and securing the nut into the newly created hole. This worked and provided us with an even more secure assembly. The sprocket moves and the bolt will be pushed forward by a bolt, rather than the plastic opening in the printed part. It may be a little wobbly, but after hacking once, we ca do so again.
We found two smaller bolts and nuts to attach the motor and since it was getting past five o’clock, we decided it would be better to start afresh with the programming part.
Experimenting with Eggshell and Shell Sand Alginates¶
Step 1: collect eggshells
Step 2: boil egg shells for 15 minutes, then dry and bake in 80 degree Celcius oven for 15 min.
I kept the brown egg shells separated from the white ones
We started with three basic recipes, using glycerine, alginate, water and either white or dark shell sand, or egg shells. All recipes, corresponding to the numbers below can be found in an online overview
Mixing recipes 1, 2 and 3.
We decided to continu with the white part of the shell sand and wanted to create a mixture that would be suitable for creating a 3D construction when extruded on a mould.
Recipes 6 and 7 were not suitable at all since they were far too lumpy. We decided to continue with recipe 4 and build upon this one.
For tests 8, 9 and 10 we kept on adding shell sand, respectively 60, 75 and 90 grams. The latter proved too hard to extrude, recipe 8 and 9 worked well.
Then I found a dissertation about printing with natural materials, titled 'Additive Manufacturing for Design in a Circular Economy' by Marita Sauerwein. She uses shell sand mixed with melted sugar to create extrudable, solid material. We, of course, had to try this ourselves.
Division of Labour
- Coding motor control + adapting 3D file: Sara
- Sketches of the thing: Jen
- Put together the thing: Sara, Patty + Becca
- 3D printing: Sara, Patty + Becca
- Material recipes + testing: Carolina + Rebecca B.
- Documentation Rebecca B.